Microsoft earlierAnnounceIt has signed a five-year, $97 billion contract with Australian infrastructure operator IREN to secure more AI cloud computing power to meet strong customer demand for AI services.
This move follows Microsoft's collaboration last month with cloud startup Nscale.Reaching an AgreementFollowing this, another large-scale procurement was undertaken to secure AI infrastructure.
IREN to purchase $58 billion worth of equipment from Dell, securing GB300 computing power.
Under the agreement, this contract will give Microsoft access to computing infrastructure built using NVIDIA GB300 GPUs. IREN plans to complete the phased deployment at its Childress, Texas facility by 2026, which is planned to support up to 750 MW (megawatt) of computing capacity.
To this end, IREN also stated that it will spend an additional approximately $58 billion to purchase the necessary GPUs and related equipment from Dell.
Microsoft is actively expanding its AI infrastructure.
Microsoft has recently been making frequent moves to ensure AI computing power; for example, in October of this year, Microsoft just launched its Azure cloud service.The first production cluster to adopt the NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 systemThis system is specifically optimized for inference models, agency AI, and multimodal generative AI.
In addition, Microsoft also signed an agreement with Nscale in October to purchase approximately 200,000 NVIDIA GB300 GPUs, which are expected to be deployed in four data centers in Europe and the United States.
IREN: Profitable transition from Bitcoin mining to AI
It's worth noting that IREN's background is similar to that of emerging AI cloud providers like CoreWeave; it was initially a Bitcoin mining operator. After realizing that its large number of GPUs were better suited for AI workloads and that it could benefit from them, even more so, IREN transformed its original Bitcoin mining-focused business model into a provider of AI computing resources.
According to Bloomberg NewsRefers toIREN CEO Daniel Roberts expects the deal with Microsoft to account for only about 10% of the company’s total computing power throughput, but is projected to generate about $19.4 billion in annualized revenue, highlighting the current amazing returns on the AI business.
Like IREN, Nscale, which Microsoft previously partnered with, was formerly part of Bitcoin miner Arkon Energy. As the demand for computing power for AI workloads surged, it was spun off from Arkon Energy in 2022 to become an AI infrastructure provider.
